Secrets in the Walls Review

WML Guess Synopsis

After a family moves into a newly built house, they being to wonder why it always smells like s***. Little do they know the contractors left them a little surprise in the walls.

DirecTV Guide Synopsis

Terror strikes when a divorcee and her two teenage daughters move into a haunted house in the suburbs.

Level of Attention While Watching: Devoted Husband

Devoted Husband: Was giving the movie 100% of my attention

With Wife, but Thinking of Mistress: Watching the movie, but not giving it my full attention

Cheating Bastard: I wasn’t paying much attention to the movie at all

Jeri Ryan

Rachel

Jeri Ryan certainly contained that “yeah… I’ve seen her somewhere before…” quality when I first started watching “Secrets in the Walls”. After IMDBing her, turns out I recall seeing her in Star Trek: Voyager commercials.

Ian Kahn

Uncle Marty

Ian Kahn brought it from the start as the loveable Uncle Marty. He didn’t seem like he was trying too hard to be loved or funny. In “Secrets in the Walls” he was always there to help out and save the day. Being an uncle myself, I can only strive to be more like Uncle Marty to my niece and nephews.

The Movie (with spoilers)

I was moderately pumped to watch this movie after seeing it was listed as a horror movie and involved the super natural instead of a cheating spouse or something. Boy how wrong I was. I think I prefer the cheating husband movies to Lifetime’s horror attempts.

“Secrets in the Walls” starts off with a single mother (Rachel) and two daughters and the mom is starting to get back into the daily work life in the city of Detroit after about eight years off. One daughter (Lizzie) is a junior in high school, although she looks like she was cast by a middle-schooler while the other daughter (Molly) is much younger looking, maybe about 10, but is also apparently a teenager according to the synopsis. Molly also has a unique super power to predict when the telephone is going to ring. No seriously, not making that up, a few seconds before the phone rings, she calls it. This is an obvious hint that she has a super natural ability and will pay off later in the movie.

As Rachel walks to the bus stop on her way home after her first day of work, a realtor talks her into seeing a house. Rachel clearly says she doesn’t think she could afford it, but the realtor talks her into seeing it anyway. Never once is price discussed to the viewers. While the realtor and Rachel are in the basement of the house, there are mysterious sounds and the realtor immediately goes into “Oh… I didn’t hear anything” mode but you can easily tell she knows there is a history to the house, but doesn’t want Rachel knowing about it and just wants the house sold.

Flash forward to a few weeks and the house’s price drops even more, but we never find out how much it was or how much it dropped, but it was enough for Rachel to afford it and all the ladies are moving into this unnecessarily big house together. Molly is immediately creeped out by the basement the first time she steps foot in it. There’s also a mysterious hole in the wall and their Uncle Marty says he can knock the wall down and they can add to the basement.

Lizzie decides she wants to stay in the basement so she can have her own space since she’s going through those teenage girl years of wanting her own space. In the closet she finds a creepy jewelry box that has a ballerina twirl and music play when you open it and it ALWAYS works.

Anyway… weird stuff starts to happen while they’re staying the house. Molly is always scared and Lizzie somehow locks herself in her closet and almost scratches her fingernails off and has to go to the hospital. With all the weird stuff happening, the kids stay with Uncle Marty and Rachel finally checks out the history of the house to find out a girl went missing and was never found. Rachel then talks to a spirit reading lady at work (because one just happens to work at her office) and she tells Rachel the girl may still be in the house and they need to find her.

My man Uncle Marty comes over and they go back into the secret area in the basement and he finds a boarded up area that happens to have a skeleton in it. The cops come and take away the body so Rachel thinks the issue is over and house is back to 100% normal. Since all of this still hasn’t take an hour and a half to complete, the movie continues and the spirit is still in the house, the physical body isn’t. After the girls move back into the house, Lizzie comes face to face with the dead girl living in the house. The dead girl then puts her necklace around Lizzie and basically takes over Lizzie’s body. Lizzie then starts acting funny and encourages Rachel to move so Lizzie (who is really the dead girl) can get get out of the house for good.

Yada yada yada… Rachel finally figures out that Lizzie is really the dead girl and then then tricks the dead girl to getting out of Lizzie’s body by taking her back to the house and quizzing her with questions only the real Lizzie would know the answer to. The ladies finally move out of the house after that, but as they’re moving, Rachels sees the same shady realtor showing the house to another family and then warns the family about it, but the guy says the family doesn’t believe in ghosts and as the camera pans away from the house you see the dead girl in the upstairs window excited for the new family to move in. Luckily this is just a bad LMN movie and so the chances of there being a sequel are low, but if this were a theater movie then “Secrets in the Walls 2: Don’t Tell” would be out this summer.

Intense Moments with Keith

Since this was classified as a horror movie, you can imagine it was filled with more than a few intense moments.

Intense Moment #1

While Rachel was sleeping… the camera kind of panned around to her face. I was thinking, “She’s going to be face to face with the dead girl right here…” then they showed the youngest daughter Molly instead! The mom then ran downstairs to find Lizzie trapped in her closet R. Kelly style.

Intense Moment #2

Rachel was sleeping but then awoke to music playing. She then goes down the creepy hallway stairs which also has a bug zapper light and goes into the basement by herself to find the music box playing and the ballerina spinning. The door then slams shut and the lights go off.

Intense Moment #3

Uncle Marty comes over to go behind the wall into the secret bed room to see what is back there. He finds a bunch of boards against a wall and then takes them off to reveal a skeleton. I’d say he took it like a champ though, almost as if he’s been in that situation before…

Intense Moment #4

Lizzie comes face to face with the dead girl. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Was the dead girl just going to thank her for finding the body or was she going to do something mean? She did the latter and totally possessed Lizzie’s body after saying something like, “YOU’RE MINE!”

Movie Doppleganger

Besides Ian Kahn kind of looking like a friend of mine, the “Secrets in the Walls” house kinda looks like… “The Amityville Horror” house.

Secrets in the Walls house (left) vs. The Amityville Horror house (right)

Other Acceptable Titles

“Two Blondes, A B**ch, and a Dead Girl”

“Dead Girl in the House”

“Amittyville Horror: Detroit”

Closing Thoughts

This movie was terrible. Started off hot, but quickly went downhill. I’ll look to stay away from LMN horror flicks if I can.